


Specular Reflection

by Tenebrielle



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bruce Banner and Clint Barton friendship, Feels, Friendship, Gen, POV: Bruce Banner, mention of suicice, mention of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenebrielle/pseuds/Tenebrielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after the battle of Manhattan, Bruce Banner tries to help Clint Barton come to terms with his actions while under Loki's control by sharing his experiences as the Hulk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted to my FF account.

Chapter 1

If someone had told Bruce Banner six months ago he would save the world, move to New York City, and befriend a SHIELD agent, he would have laughed nervously and left the country.  The Other Guy didn’t play well with government agencies and Bruce wasn’t particularly fond of them himself.   He had no great desire to spend his days rotting in some concrete cell, drugged up to his eyeballs.  Bruce had long since resigned himself to the fact that it was better to live in some godforsaken slum and do a little good with his life instead.

But then the thing with the Tesseract happened, and he and the Other Guy were thrust rather dramatically into a strange new world.  By the time the dust settled over Manhattan, he was no longer alone and on the run.  He was part of a team; an Avenger.  Talk about a paradigm shift.

They were all staying in Stark Tower (despite the ongoing repairs) because nobody but Steve had any other place to go.  “All” usually meant a subset of Bruce, Tony, Steve, and Natasha.  Clint came and went.  Rumor had it that he had a place in the Bronx. Nobody knew for sure because the agent remained largely aloof from the group.  He spent most of his time on the roof or on the makeshift shooting range in the basement of Stark Tower.  Bruce privately suspected that it had something to do with his actions while possessed by Loki.  He hadn’t worked up the courage to ask Natasha about it.  She tended to be sensitive about Clint and he always tried to be extra nice to her make up for the Other Guy’s actions on the helicarrier.

One morning, Bruce emerged from his new lab to make a cup of tea (Tony had hijacked and subsequently dismantled his hot pot for an urgent project).  His head was buzzing with ideas.  He still couldn’t believe it was _his_ lab:  he had a new gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer; a state of the art wet chemistry set up (if he ever felt the need to indulge in some wet chemistry) and fume hood, centrifuges, a sample preparation area, plus all the fancy tools and glassware and expensive reagents he could ever want.  He even had _windows_!

None of it was really equipment Bruce needed for his usual research, but it was all his!  The mass spec and GC would almost certainly get moved back to the materials division. As they had to renovate another lab before they could move them, Bruce got to keep them for the time being and it just killed him to waste instrument time.

Bruce eagerly mulled over the possibilities while he waited for the water to boil.  He could probably come up with something to do on the mass spec.  Isotopes were not his thing but that was okay.  Maybe he’d even be able to get a quick paper out before Tony finished bullying SHIELD and the City of New York into letting him build a proper radiation lab.  Even better, maybe he could convince Tony to let him do some of the characterization work on the “starkium” powering the ARC rector in his chest.  He grinned at the thought.  That would be fantastic.

It felt good to settle down again.  Banner hadn’t been this happy since the accident.  Even the Other Guy seemed content.

The sound of his name pulled him out of these pleasant thoughts.  Bruce looked up.  He overheard the sounds of an argument.  Arguments were not uncommon in Stark Tower (Tony and Natasha butted heads on a daily basis), but he noted this one as unusual because: firstly, it was whispered and secondly, instead of arguing with Tony, Natasha was arguing with Clint.  It sounded like they were out in the hallway.  Bruce froze.

“I’m serious,” Natasha’s voice said.  “I think you should talk to Banner.”

Clint’s voice sounded irritated. “Not now, Nat.”

“Do you want to get off probation or not?” Natasha demanded heatedly.  “You need to deal with it or you’ll be on desk duty forever.  You can’t bullshit psych on this one.  It’s too important.”

 “I told you, I’m _fine_.”

“Please.  All you do now is go to the range and brood over that damned video.  Do you know how many times you’ve watched it?  Because I do.  You are _not_ fine, Clint.  Talk to Banner.”

Clint made an exasperated noise.  “The guy’s a _geek_ , Tash-”

“Yeah, a geek who’s killed people because when he loses his temper a giant green rage monster takes control of his mind.  You’re right, Clint, I don’t know what he could possibly have in common with you.”

Bruce winced silently.  Natasha’s words had hit a sensitive mark.  Evidently, Barton felt similarly because he let out a low hiss.

“Don’t give me that look. I think Banner might know a thing or two about dealing with what L-“

“Don’t say it,” Clint snapped.

“ _Loki_ did to you,” Natasha finished.  Bruce imagined her crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest.  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of Banner?”

“That’s rich, comin’ from you,” Clint muttered mutinously.

Bruce knew the jab stung them both, but Natasha it slide.   “Clint.  How could it hurt?”

“If I talk to him, will you lay the hell off?” the other agent asked sullenly.

“Yes.”

“Fine.”

Bruce edged silently out of the kitchenette and returned to the lab.  His good mood had deflated into something much more pensive.  He’d suspected Clint would find him eventually and ask, but he’d never imagined Natasha would put him up to it.  He supposed it made sense.  Both he and Clint had been forced to do things against their will that went against their very natures: Clint by the force of Loki’s magic, and Bruce whenever he lost his constant battle with the Other Guy.  But still, he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about discussing his transformations with someone else.  There was something intensely personal about the experience that was hard to articulate.

So Bruce was somewhat surprised to find that he had actually been looking forward to seeing the laconic marksman by the time Clint finally made his way down the lab.  The chimes Bruce had attached to the door jingled when he opened it, startling the agent.   The scientist looked up from his computer and smiled.

“Hi,” he said, before looking back at his code.  He could watch Barton through the transparent monitor while he worked.   

“Doctor,” Clint said by way of greeting.  He eyed the chimes with suspicion.

“Bruce,” Banner corrected him pleasantly. “I’m not that kind of doctor, Agent Barton.”

The corner of Barton’s mouth quirked.  “Make it Clint.”  His keen eyes roamed over the lab before settling on the scientist again.  “What’s with the bells?”

“Oh, that’s for Tony,” Bruce explained with a chuckle.  “Among his, uh, other habits, he thinks it’s fun to sneak up on me.  I think it’s his way of making me feel welcome.”

“Seems a little low tech for this place,” Clint observed.  He hiked himself casually onto an open place on one of the lab benches, being careful to ensure he faced both Bruce and the door.

“I asked JARVIS to warn me when someone came in, but Tony just overrode my commands.  He can’t override my chimes though,” Bruce said with another chuckle.  He appreciated the fact that Tony treated him like a normal guy, but his nerves had limits.  “So what can I do for you, Clint?”

Clint shrugged.  “Nothing, I’m just checking out the labs.  Security stuff.”

It was probably a lie, but he didn’t call Barton on it. Bruce knew this because SHIELD had called him in the previous week to go over security protocols.  To his humiliation, it turned out _security protocols_ was just SHIELD-speak for _Hulk contingency plan_.  They tried to make it sound boring so Tony wouldn’t be around to stick up for him.  Tony had been livid when he found out and had a shouting match with Director Fury about boundaries and “my tower, my rules”.

The scientist decided to throw his cards on the table.  He didn’t want to pressure the archer, but he wanted him to realize that they both knew why he was here.  The trick was to do it in such a way that he could plausibly deny having eavesdropped on the two agents, but was clever enough to get Clint’s attention.

“Wanted to see what we geeks were up to?” Bruce asked without looking up.  He made sure to linger a little on the word ‘geeks’.

That got Barton’s attention.  He looked up sharply. “ _What?_ ”

“Sorry, did I say something wrong?” Bruce replied, innocently looking at him over his glasses.  Clint studied him with narrowed eyes.  After a moment, the agent smiled ever so slightly.  Satisfied, Bruce gestured at his computer.  “Mind if I…?”

Clint shrugged.  “Knock yourself out.”

Bruce adjusted his glasses and went back to his code.  His fingers flew over the keyboard (he made Tony give him an actual keyboard; programming was irritating enough without dealing with a touchscreen), but he kept an eye on Barton through the monitor. 

The sniper let him get through another twenty lines or so before asking: “What are you working on?”

“I’m writing a program to automate some data analysis,” Bruce said without looking up.  “It’s a pain to do manually.”

He got another ten frustrating lines (really, he should make Tony do this, he was a much quicker programmer than Bruce could ever hope to be) before he heard the chimes tinkle and realized the agent was gone.  The scientist smiled a little. It was scary how quietly the SHIELD agents could move and Bruce knew he wasn’t even _trying_. 

Clint dropped by a few more times throughout the week.  He sidled into the lab with a quiet “Hey Bruce,” or a simple “Banner,” before hauling himself onto the same spot on the bench where he could see the whole lab.  Bruce noticed he favored that place, and started keeping the spot intentionally free of clutter.  Sometimes they chatted a bit, usually about neutral topics like Steve’s latest battles with technology or Tony’s latest public antics. Sometimes Clint simply watched him work for a little while before leaving.    

His actions gave Bruce the impression he was being gradually sized up.  He didn’t mind. People who knew about the Other Guy tended to be wary around him, but he didn’t get the impression there was anything personal about it when Clint did it.  The sniper was just naturally cautious. His presence was unobtrusive and it was sort of nice to have company.  With the exception of Tony, everyone else tended to avoid Bruce’s lab.

They finally made progress on the fourth visit.  Bruce was still trying to make his program work, and it was getting irritating.  Clint appeared with his soft tread.  They exchanged the usual pleasantries.  The agent settled himself on his perch, and Bruce went back to his code.  Maybe this time it would work. 

Suddenly, Clint blurted: “Is this all you do?”

Bruce blinked himself out of his coding trance.  “What, sit in front of a computer?  I’d say about 90 percent of it, yeah.”

“Oh,” said the sniper with a vague air of disappointment.

Bruce clicked the compile button and grinned lopsidedly at Clint.  “Expecting something a little sexier?”

He got a slight smile in response.  “Yeah.  Stark talks about this lab like it’s his kid or something.”

“I’ll show you around while this compiles, if you want,” Bruce offered. “We’ve got some pretty cool toys.  The optics lab down the hall is the best, though.”

“Optics?”

“Lasers. Big ones,” Bruce said with a smile.  He couldn’t go wrong with lasers.  Everyone liked lasers.

“Got nothing better to do,” Clint said, hopping down from the bench. 

Bruce gave him a quick tour of the lab.  To his credit, Clint at least pretended to look interested for most of it.  He spent too long describing his current pet project: a smaller version of the detector that he and Tony had built to find the Tesseract that he was developing for use in satellites.  To make up for it, Bruce took Clint down the hall to the optics lab to show off the lasers. He fired up one of the big ones and let Clint blow holes in a variety of materials ranging from marshmallows to half-inch steel plate.  The agent seemed to enjoy that.

By the time they returned to Bruce’s lab, the computer was beeping insistently.   Bruce checked the monitor and swore under his breath.  His program was bugged.  He didn’t recognize the error either.  He turned and nearly jumped out of his skin because Clint had suddenly materialized six inches behind him. “Geez, Clint!”

“Sorry,” Clint said, not looking the least bit repentant.  He looked over Bruce’s shoulder at the screen.    “What happened?”

“It’s still bugged and I don’t understand why,” Bruce sighed.  “I’ll make Tony go through it later.  He’ll probably program it to whistle _Sexy and I Know It_ or tap dance or something when it finishes processing, but at least it will work.”

“Good luck with that,” Clint said with a hint of sarcasm.  He lingered in the doorway for a moment before he disappeared and said: “If you get sick of staring at a computer, come check out the range sometime.”


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce Banner was seriously reconsidering Tony’s offer to build him a lab assistant.

He had entered the lab this morning to a cacophony of alarms. The vacuum on the mass spectrometer had failed overnight.   His second discovery of the day ended up being that JARVIS was not networked to either the mass spec or the GC (he made a mental note to remedy that stupid oversight as soon as possible).  That meant Bruce got to spend two hours on the phone with an engineer trying to determine the source of the failure, and if any of the delicate electronics had been damaged by the sudden breach.  At least he’d finally managed to turn the alarms off.

The scientist was now crammed on his back awkwardly under the malfunctioning instrument, trying to extract a defective turbopump. He was sweating from the hot fan exhaust and he’d got grease on his glasses and pump oil all over his trousers.  Matters were not improved by the fact that the exact wrench he needed had gone missing (probably pilfered by Tony) so he had to improvise. The other wrench was just a bit too large and not quite the right shape for the manufacturer’s proprietary bolts.  His knuckles hurt from when he had banged them into the machine’s casing when the wrench inevitably slipped.

Bruce took a deep breath and flexed his green-gloved hands (Tony thought it was funny to get him Hulk-green gloves instead of the purple ones he had requested) before picking up the wrench and trying to loosen the last stubborn bolt for the third time.  He gritted his teeth and twisted as hard as he could.  The wrench suddenly popped loose, sending Banner’s sore knuckles careening into the unyielding metal underbelly of the machine. Again.

“Damn it,” he swore, shaking his injured hand.  He felt the Other Guy stir on the edge of his consciousness, but he easily repressed the sensation.  He examined his hand with a sigh.  Thankfully the nitrile was undamaged and his skin had been spared.  It still hurt, though. “Ow _._ ”

The chimes on the lab door tinkled faintly. And that would be Tony.  Bruce rolled his eyes.  Stark had been trying to enlist the physicist to help him build an accelerator for approximately the last 72 hours.  The billionaire inventor had been quite taken with the idea of Bruce doing the initial research on what he fondly referred to as “starkium”.  The problem was that he hadn’t synthesized any “starkium” beyond what was currently powering the arc reactor in his chest.

Tony’s solution to this oversight was to build his own accelerator in Stark Tower.  Pepper had wanted her living room back, so she’d made him dismantle the one he had already built in Malibu.  Tony was now too impatient to wait for the pieces to arrive in New York.  Bruce had no interest in the project and his patience with Tony’s nagging was wearing thin.

Okay, fine, the physicist had to admit that he had quite a bit of professional interest in building an _accelerator_ from scratch.  But Bruce had already survived one horrific lab accident and he didn’t care to push his luck.  Tony might be willing to stake his life on his math, but Bruce had since learned to be a little more cautious. 

Either way, he was tired of Stark’s pestering.  “For the last time, Tony, I’m not helping you build an accelerator for R and D,” Bruce said sourly, raising his voice to be heard over the humming instruments. “No, that’s _not_ a challenge.  Yes, I believe you can do it.  I can go to Brookhaven or Los Alamos.  Ask me again and I’ll make sure the next time I go green is in your garage.”

To his surprise, it wasn’t Tony who responded.  “That I’d pay to see,” Clint’s voice replied with the hint of a chuckle.

Bruce smiled.  “Oh, hi, Clint,” he called.  He stuck his head out from under the machine. “I’m down here.”

After a moment, the agent’s face popped into view above him.  He looked down at the disheveled scientist and raised an eyebrow.  “Do I want to know?”

Bruce sighed and retreated back under the mass spec.  He glowered at the reluctant bolt. “I’m trying to replace a broken turbopump.”

“Doesn’t Stark have some robot to do that for you?”

“Probably,” Bruce replied, his voice echoing weirdly through the machine.  “But I like to do it myself, sometimes.   Just to prove I still can.  I did a lot of this sort of thing in grad school.”

“So…can you?”

“If I can ever get this last bolt loose, yeah,” Bruce grumbled.  He eyed the bolt again and decided to spare his knuckles another attempt. He extracted himself from beneath the mass spec and leaned tiredly against a cabinet.  Clint was watching him from a few meters away from his accustomed place on the bench closest to Bruce’s desk. 

“Got a minute?” Clint asked. 

“Sure,” Bruce said.  There was an unusually pensive quality about Clint’s voice that caught his attention. Well, he needed a break anyway. The scientist stripped off his gloves and ran a damp hand through his equally damp hair.  A dark bruise was already forming across his knuckles, he noted with irritation. “Shoot.” 

The sniper hesitated for a moment before taking the plunge. “When you go green," he asked, "do you remember what you did?”

Bruce blinked in surprise.  So Clint had finally decided to trust him.  Now what?  He took off his smudged glasses and inspected them, playing for time to collect his thoughts.   He decided that trying to polish them on his shirt would be a losing battle.  Bruce got to his feet and fished around on the bench for a wash-bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a dry wipe.  He glanced up at the agent while he methodically cleaned the lenses.

Clint’s choice of words had not been lost on the scientist.  Unlike the rest of the team (Bruce included), the SHIELD agent had not made a distinction between Banner and the Other Guy. Bruce suspected his question was just a roundabout way of asking if it was normal for Clint to not remember what he had done while under Loki’s control.

 “As a rule, no,” Banner replied.  He inspected his glasses again before dropping them into his shirt pocket.  He thought about what he would have wanted to know before he transformed for the first time.  Bruce decided to fall back on simple honesty.  He took a seat on edge of his desk and took a deep breath before finishing the thought. 

“It’s complicated.  Usually I wake up and it’s just…gone.  I’m in a new place.  I’m cold and alone and terrified.  No matter how much I wrack my brain I can’t remember how I got there or anything I did.”

Clint didn’t say anything.  Bruce paused to collect his thoughts and continued.  “Sometimes, it comes back later.  In flashes. Images mostly, sort of out of order.  Sometimes there’s a really strong sense of emotion.  The Other Guy isn’t too articulate.  Anything that does come back is always sort of….”

“Fractured,” Clint said suddenly. Bruce looked up at him with surprise.  It was the exact word he had been fumbling for.  The sniper did not return his look. His eyes were focused on an invisible spot on the floor.

“Yeah, exactly.  Fractured,” Bruce said.  He hesitated, struggling to articulate his thoughts.  “It’s disconcerting when I do remember. But I don’t really remember, because it wasn’t me…it was someone else.  They aren’t my memories.  But they’re _there_ in my head, so they have to be mine.  They just feel wrong somehow.  Alien.”

“It’s kinda like watching a movie.  You see yourself doing things…” Clint started, but his nerve failed before he finished the thought.  A pair of angry red spots burned on his cheeks.  His hands clenched into fists. 

To Bruce’s knowledge, the sniper had never spoken directly about being controlled by Loki with anyone except Natasha. They both knew why he was here.  It was stupid to beat around the bush any longer.

“How much do you remember?” Bruce asked, deciding on a direct approach.  He didn’t mention Loki’s name.  Clint knew all too well what he was talking about.

“Not much,” the agent admitted.  His eyes flicked to Banner before falling back to the floor.  “Flashes, like you said.” 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said quietly.  “Sometimes it’s better not to remember anything.  Then you can sort of…pretend it never happened.”

“It’s more what I _don’t_ that gets to me, you know?” Clint said. His voice was tight; rigidly controlled.  He ran a hand uncomfortably through his sandy hair.  Bruce sensed it cost him a lot to make the admission.

“Yeah,” Bruce said fervently.  “I do.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, neither looking at the other.  Clint kicked his boots back and forth a little.  Bruce thought it was weird seeing the usually ice-blooded agent fidget. 

The silence finally became too much for Clint to stand.  “A lot of it’s from my fight with Nat,” he added suddenly.

“If I’m emotionally connected to something, it can affect the Other Guy enough that I remember.  Like when Tony fell through the portal,” Bruce told him, relieved he had broken the awkward pause.  “Or finding my girlfriend in the wreckage after I…had the accident.  Maybe that happened to you.”

The scientist frowned.  Why did he keep using that word, _accident_?  What had happened to him was no accident.  Injecting himself with his own experimental formula, sitting under a gamma source, and expecting the universe to just _play along_ had been nothing but pure, unadulterated hubris.  The familiar nauseating sense of self-hatred rose in his chest and he felt the Other Guy stir again.  Bruce took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing himself to relax.  He would pay penance for that arrogance for the rest of his life.

The spark of humor in Clint’s reply dragged him out of his useless self-pity.  The corner of the sniper’s mouth was quirked into one of his not-quite smiles.  “What’re you implying, Banner?”

Bruce looked up and smiled sheepishly.  They all had their own theories about the nature of the ambiguous relationship between Clint and Natasha, which ranged from more-or-less platonic (Steve) to very much the opposite (Tony).  Bruce himself fell somewhere in the middle, but he was willing to bet none of them were even close to correct.  Not that the SHIELD agents themselves would ever admit to anything.

Clint’s smirk slowly faded and the brief moment of levity was gone.   “So can I get it back?” he asked, his pale eyes settling onto the scientist.  There was a plaintive note in his voice that dragged Bruce back to hellish nights steeped in guilt and pierced by brittle fragments of memory.  He took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

 “No,” Bruce told him.  Clint seemed to slump slightly with what he assumed was disappointment.  “Believe me, I’ve tried.  It either comes back piecemeal or not at all. It gets worse if you try to force it.  If you sort of let it go, sometimes things will start to come back.  That’s one of the reasons I meditate.”

“Meditate?” Clint said incredulously, making a face.  “You want me to _meditate_?”

“It works for me,” Bruce replied with a slight smile.  “Like when you’ve lost something.  Sometimes you only find it after you stop looking.”

He was surprised to find that felt good in a cathartic sort of way to talk about his transformations.  He had tried to describe them to others before with little success.  Betty tried to be supportive, but they had so little time and she had been more focused on analyzing what happened than really listening. Tony had asked once after a night of heavy drinking and had probably forgotten about the conversation entirely.

Clint still looked thoughtful, but he said nothing further on the subject of memories.  Instead he rubbed his hands together and said: “You want me to take a look at that pump?”

Bruce blinked.  Really, it was amazing how quickly the agent could switch gears. Clint was full of surprises today.    “Uh, sure.”

Armed with a pair of green nitrile gloves and the wrench, Clint wormed under the mass spec and had the bolt out in less than thirty seconds.  He set the broken pump carefully on the floor (Bruce cringed inwardly because the floor was _dirty_ and dirty was synonymous with _bad_ ) and glanced up at the physicist.  “You got the new one?”

Bruce handed him the new pump and crouched down beside the mass spec.  He bobbed up and down nervously as the agent rotated the pump in his hands and inspected it, itching to get it in his own hands.  “Yeah, it goes there, like-”

Clint raised his eyebrows.  “Relax, man,” he said wryly.  “I work on quinjets.  I think I can handle this…thing.”

Bruce laughed and left him to it.  He put on his glasses and dropped into the chair in front of the computer that controlled the mass spec.  Clint emerged a few moments later, peeling off his gloves. Bruce clicked a few controls and they heard the new pump hum to life.  Clint clapped him on the shoulder and turned to leave.  The scientist waved at him absently while he pulled up the vacuum readouts for the entire instrument and studied them for any other anomalies.  At these rates, it would take several hours for the mass spec to evacuate-

“Hey, Banner?”

Bruce looked up from his screen.  Clint was hovering inside the lab doorway.  “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

The scientist smiled.  “Anytime.”


	3. Chapter 3

Two years on the run had made him a light sleeper, but that did not mean Bruce Banner appreciated waking up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.  Especially when he hadn’t really slept for a few nights running.  The scientist groaned into his pillow and rolled over. 

For once in a very long time, it hadn’t been nightmares keeping him awake.  Tony had hit an inspired (well, _inspired_ was really more like _manic,_ but Bruce wasn’t complaining) period and his energy was infectious.  They’d spent hours in the lab together, implementing a series of ingenious (Tony’s word; Bruce was more conservative) changes to the miniaturized gamma detector.  While it had been thoroughly enjoyable to be so focused on a project again, the physicist finally had to give in to his need for sleep after two nights of minimal rest.  He found it harder to control the Other Guy when he was exhausted.  Stark was probably still up, tinkering with his resurrected accelerator now that Bruce was in bed. 

Bruce had nearly dozed off again when he heard a furtive knock coming from his front door.  He opened his eyes and squinted at the luminescent display of his alarm clock.  It read 2:17AM.  Banner hauled himself into a sitting position with another groan, dangling his pajama’d legs over the edge of his bed.  Stubble raked his palms as he rubbed his face blearily.  The knock sounded again, slightly louder this time. 

“Okay, okay…I’m coming,” he called irritably, feeling nettled.  God help Tony if it was the insomniac billionaire trying to tempt him back down to the lab. 

Bruce got up and fumbled in the dark for a shirt from the pile of clean laundry on the chair beside his dresser.  He dragged it over his head while he shuffled into the living room.  The lights came up automatically (it had taken him a week to get used to _that_ ) when he entered the room. He unbolted the front door and cracked it to reveal a shivering Clint Barton. 

“Hey,” Bruce said, not entirely surprised to find the agent on his doorstep in the middle of the night.  “Everything all right?”

“Nat’s out of town,” the agent said, looking up at Bruce with a wordless plea.  His eyes were ringed by dark circles.  He looked absolutely dead on his feet. “I didn’t know where else to go…”

“It’s fine,” Bruce said with a yawn.  He smiled drowsily at the agent.  “I _did_ say anytime.  C’mon in.”

“’Preciate it, man,” Clint mumbled.

Banner opened the door fully and the agent stepped inside.  Clint sort of hugged his bare arms to his chest against a chill the scientist didn’t feel and Bruce suddenly realized he was soaking wet.  His thin civilian clothes were practically plastered to his body.  Concern began to work through Bruce’s sleep-induced haze.    It was distinctly weird seeing the sniper look so…vulnerable. 

“What happened to you?” the physicist asked, glancing at the agent’s wet clothes while he reset the manual locks on his door.  Stark Tower security was state-of-the-art, but Bruce slept better knowing the door was physically bolted. 

“Been out on the roof,” Clint said tonelessly. Bruce could hear rain splattering the windows.  Clint’s lips were actually blue with cold. The outdoor temperature was not all that low, but the windblown rain would have a chilling effect.  How long had the agent been outside?    

“In this weather?” Bruce asked, raising an eyebrow.  As if to emphasize his point, the wind chose that moment to make a keening noise as it rushed past the windows.  They both glanced towards the source of the sound.

“Yeah,” Clint replied.  He swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “He doesn’t like storms.”

“What?”  Bruce exclaimed before he could stop himself.  It took him a moment to figure out that Clint was talking about Loki.  “Oh,” he said with a sigh. “Right.  Make yourself at home.  I’ll go get a towel…”

The scientist retreated into the bathroom.  Bruce rumpled his hair as soon as he was safely out of sight, tugging on it a little as he tried to wake himself up.  He’d been so wrapped up in his work with Tony that he had barely noticed Clint’s absence.  He quickly counted back the days and realized it had been almost a week since they had last spoken.  Clint had drifted past the lab once or twice, but Tony’s presence seemed to put him off and Bruce had been busy so he’d just waved through the door and gone back to work.  He’d never dreamed something might be wrong. Feeling guilty, Bruce selected a towel and padded back into the living room.

He found Clint slumped against one of the large living room windows; his forehead and one arm pressed against the glass.  Bruce noticed his shoulders rising and falling rhythmically and recognized the pattern as a breathing exercise.  He wondered if Clint had finally started listening to the SHIELD counselors, or if he’d just picked it up from Bruce.  The physicist edged his way around the sofa and the low coffee table to approach the sniper.

“Hey, Clint?” Bruce said.  He reached out to gently touch the archer’s shoulder.  “Here, I got you-“

Bruce’s fingers barely brushed his sleeve before Clint exploded into action. 

Bruce hit the floor before he’d even realized the agent had moved.  The back of his head connected hard with the edge of the coffee table.  Stars burst across his vision, accompanied by sharp pain.  The pain and subsequent adrenaline rush brought the horrible crushing sensation of the Other Guy roaring to the front of his consciousness.   He clenched his fists because his heart was starting to race and the gun was in his face and the Other Guy was slipping out of his grip and Bruce had to keep it together or _people were going to die_ -

His fingernails bit into his palms and he focused on the small pain as he tried to rein in the Other Guy.  For a split second, Bruce thought he was going to come out.  It took every ounce of his self-control to force the monster to the back of his psyche.  Panting, he looked up from the floor at Clint.

“Jesus,” Clint breathed, his face crumpling as he realized what he had done.  The agent looked between his gun and Bruce with shock.  His body began to shudder, and the blood drained so rapidly from his face that Bruce suddenly, irrationally, thought he was going to collapse. “ _Jesus_ , Bruce, I am so sorry.”   

“Just put the gun down, okay?” Bruce told him, forcing his voice to remain even despite his fear.  The Other Guy didn’t like guns (one of the few sentiments that they shared) and he was roiling at the sight of the weapon. He locked his eyes on Clint’s until the agent complied, ignoring the Other Guy’s mental roars of anger.

Clint let the gun fall but he was too well-trained to let it slip from his fingers.  The archer swayed drunkenly on his feet before placing a hand on the window to steady himself. He slid down the glass to the floor and drew his knees towards his chest.  His hands were empty when he brought them up to cradle his head.  “You okay?” Clint asked through his hands, sounding shaken.

“Yeah,” Bruce gasped.  “Just…give me a minute.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and worked through a couple of breathing exercises.  With the weapon safely out of sight, the Other Guy finally began to settle down.  The past few weeks had been so pleasant, so busy, that Banner hadn’t had to deal with a full-scale assault from the Other Guy.  He’d almost begun to forget how difficult it could be to maintain control over his alter ego in times of stress.  Bruce opened his eyes when he felt like he had reasserted some semblance of control, even though his heart was still pounding madly.   

The scientist ran a shaky hand through his rumpled hair, wincing as his fingers made contact with the growing lump on the back of his skull.  He quashed the Other Guy’s protests and dragged himself into a sitting position against the window beside Clint.  Wordlessly, he handed the agent the fallen towel.  Clint mechanically reached up to dry his hair before wrapping the cloth around his shoulders.

Bruce broke the silence. “You don’t usually carry in the tower,” he observed.  A sudden fear gripped him.  The last time Banner had carried a gun alone out into the rain he had not intended to return. “Clint, what were you doing on the roof?”

The agent squeezed his temples wearily.  “It’s not loaded,” he explained, sounding drained.  “I feel naked without it but I’ve had the jumps so bad I left the clip in my locker.”

Bruce’s relief was tempered by a slap of irritation that he’d almost gone green over an empty gun, but Clint sounded so distressed that he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with him about it.  Bruce could understand not wanting to feel naked better than most.   “Why were you outside?” he repeated softly.

“He doesn’t like storms,” Clint said.  He bowed his head slightly, resting it on the knuckles of one hand.   The words seemed to pain him greatly but he couldn’t seem to stop them from spilling out.  “Sometimes it’s like he’s still in my head.  He shattered when Nat hit me and I trickled back in.  But sometimes I see something or hear something and I find one of his shards.  I get these weird thoughts, like he’s inside again.”

There was a note of hysteria in his voice that Bruce suspected was due to exhaustion more than anything else.  “How long has it been since you’ve slept?”

“Christ, I don’t know,” the archer said, rubbing a hand across his face.  “Days.  I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Bruce…it scares the hell out of me.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I saw this girl the other day,” Clint said in a dull voice.  The words were flowing more freely from him now but they seemed no less painful.  “A red-head.  I glanced at her and I was thinking about how she looked kinda like Nat and all the sudden I just _hated_ her.  Really, truly, _hated_ her.  I wanted to hold her down and slit her throat and laugh while her blood spilled out over my hands. It was warm.”

Bruce shuddered.  He didn’t want to interrupt the archer, so he moved a little just to demonstrate he was still there and listening.

“If it had been Nat, I think I would have tried, Bruce.  I really do.  Why would I even _think_ something like that? I mean, I’ve done some _fucked_ up shit.  But never like that. I don’t enjoy it. It’s not me.  It can’t be me,” he said, shivering.  Bruce suspected it wasn’t entirely due to his wet clothes.  “I haven’t slept since.”

“I can see why,” Bruce murmured.  He’d known far too many nights like Clint had described.  He gave the agent a couple moments to pull himself together, weighing what he might say that could help.  As usual, he went for plain honesty.

“Needles set me off,” Bruce told him.  “The Other Guy doesn’t like guns.  Army uniforms don’t set too well with either of us,” he added with a tiny smile.  “They make me want to run.  He just wants to smash.  Usually, I win.”

“But not always,” Clint said hollowly. 

Bruce hesitated.  He glanced down at his hands.  A set of four bloody crescents marked each of his palms.   “No, not always.”

“Do...do you ever enjoy what he makes you do?”

The scientist looked away.  They had crossed into territory that Bruce was not comfortable _thinking_ about, let alone discussing.  He didn’t want to answer Clint’s question.   It brought back the taste of metal and the awful knowledge that the last sound he would ever hear was the rattle of a barrel against his teeth.

“The Other Guy always likes getting let off the chain,” Bruce said evasively.

Clint was not to be put off.  “You know what I mean.”

Bruce hugged his knees to his chest.  He’d promised himself over a year ago that he would not waste any more time brooding over this lowest point of his life. He’d already spent too many months lost in that dark corner of his mind; groping along after the madness with General Ross and another failed attempt at ridding himself of the Other Guy. His self-imposed isolation had served to make it worse.  The downward spiral had left Banner on knees in the rain, tasting metal and desperate for a final solution that turned out to be not so final after all.  And it had all started by asking himself painful questions like Clint’s.

He could feel Clint’s desperate eyes boring into him, looking for reassurance.  Bruce couldn’t just ignore him. 

“Yes, I do,” Bruce admitted.  He sighed and leaned back against the window.  The cool glass soothed the lump on the back of his head.   “And it kills me that I do.  I don’t always remember the details, but I remember the feeling of…satisfaction later.”

Clint glanced up, but he said nothing.  Bruce took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  “There’s one in particular, a solider.  The Other Guy threw him into a tree so hard it crushed his bones.  They sounded like stepping on twigs.  He, _I_ , relished the sound.  I dream about that one a lot…”

Bruce felt sick.  He always felt sick at the recollection.  “I _know_ I don’t like to hurt people, Clint.  It just sort of happens.  But there’s always this nagging doubt that because the Other Guy likes it…I can’t help but think that maybe there is a little part of me that likes it too; that enjoys it, that wants these things to happen and keep happening.”

“He,” Clint started but an angry light came into his eyes and he choked the name out defiantly, “ _Loki_ was going to make me kill Natasha.  Hell, I even tried.  She kicked my ass.  In my dreams though, she doesn’t win.  I do.  If you can call what I do next _winning_...”  Clint said.  He sounded almost relieved, somehow liberated by the admission.  “There’s not a lot that scares me anymore, but those dreams do.”

Bruce wished he felt similarly.  He ignored the anxious knots in his stomach and answered the veiled question inside Clint’s last statement.  “I try not to dwell on it too much,” he replied.  “It’s easier said than done, but I end up in some…bad places if I do.”

“Noted and logged, man,” Clint said with a yawn.  His body seemed to uncurl as he released his knees and let his legs drop to the floor, where they splayed slightly to either side.  He let his head loll back against the window.  “Jesus, I’m tired.”

“You’re welcome to the couch,” Bruce offered.  Clint hesitated, indecision plain on his face.  The corner of Bruce’s mouth quirked upwards. _Spies,_ he thought.  “I’m not going to kill you in your sleep, _Agent_ Barton,” he added wryly.

Clint let out a snort of humorless laughter.  “Fair enough.”

The scientist smiled and retreated into his bedroom in search of a blanket and dry clothes for his guest.  When he returned to the living room less than five minutes later, Clint was already passed out on the sofa; damp clothes and all.  His boots were on the floor below his feet.  The butt of Clint’s sidearm protruded from the top of one of the boots.  The scientist supposed that constituted a sign of trust. Bruce didn’t have the heart to wake him, so he took a risk and got close enough to throw a blanket over the archer so he wouldn’t catch cold. 

The physicist went into his study, taking care to leave the door ajar so he could see Clint and Clint could see him.  Bruce dropped into his chair and leaned on his elbows on his desk with a sigh.  He massaged his temples wearily before thumbing through a well-worn stack of journal articles. Bruce selected the driest, most obtuse review paper he could find.  He located his glasses among the desktop clutter.  With a final glance into the living room, Bruce settled down to read.  There would be no sleep tonight, at least for him.


	4. Chapter 4

The shooting range in the basement of Stark Tower was quiet by the time Bruce Banner wandered inside, and it wasn’t entirely due to the ridiculous orange earphones they made him wear to protect his hearing.  He could see Clint was the only one shooting and his weapon of choice didn’t make a lot of noise.  After a quick look over his shoulder to make sure nobody was around to yell at him for breaking regulations, Bruce slipped the earphones down around his neck.   The silence of the concrete room was broken only by the distinctive _thwack_ of arrow in target. Bruce slipped unobtrusively along the rear wall. He had no pretenses about his ability to sneak up on Clint, but he didn’t want to break the archer’s concentration.

The agent had spent his morning at SHIELD headquarters undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.  Bruce knew this because Clint had dropped by the lab dressed in his SHIELD black for a quick chat before heading over.  They’d mostly talked about the experiment Bruce was preparing to run with Tony, but Clint had mentioned having to face “Fury and the shrinks” in passing.  Bruce suspected he had actually been looking to quell his nerves about facing psych, and with Natasha still out of town, Bruce was the natural choice.  The physicist had been flattered all the same.  It had been a long time since anyone had looked to him for moral support. 

Bruce studied the archer with a frown.  He liked to watch Clint practice.  There was usually something Zen about his shooting; some greater serenity in his fluid motions as he reached for an arrow, drew back, and let it fly. Today, however, there was a manic quality about his shooting that the scientist found unsettling. He knew Clint tended to hit the range when he was upset, just like Steve tended to destroy punching bags and Bruce tended to shut himself up in the lab.  His heart sank a little. Evidently things had not gone well for the archer at SHIELD.

“Didn’t expect to see you down here,” Clint called without looking at him.  He drew back another arrow and fired.  “Thought you and Stark were doing that experiment.”

It was safe to approach now that he had been acknowledged.   Bruce stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled over to where the archer was standing.  “We tested the new detector earlier.  JARVIS’s processing the data now.”

“Oh.”  Another draw, another shot, another thwack.  “Did it work?” Clint asked.

“I won’t know until I see the reduced data, but it looks promising,” Bruce said. He waited for the archer to loose another arrow before taking the plunge.  “So how did it go at headquarters?”

Clint’s jaw tightened. “Still grounded,” he told Bruce.  He punctuated his statement with more arrows.  “The psych guys,” _Draw, shoot, thwack_ , “want to do another eval,” _Draw, shoot, thwack_ , “in a couple of weeks.  Hill,” _Draw, shoot, thwack,_ “sided with them.  Fury,” _Draw, shoot, thwack_ , “sided with Hill.”

The archer lowered his bow and ducked to wipe sweat from his forehead on his shirt sleeve.  He glanced at Banner before looking back downrange.  “Hell with that,” he sighed.

Bruce followed his gaze to the target.  Several black shafts surrounded the bull’s-eye in a near-perfect ring.  The last arrow was still thrilling in the center. Two additional targets had been treated similarly. From the way the paper was mangled on each target, Bruce could tell Clint had been at this for quite some time; probably since he’d returned from SHIELD.  The sniper wordlessly rolled his shoulders to release some accumulated tension and stalked down to the end of the range to collect his arrows. Bruce felt a pang of guilt for not extracting himself from the lab sooner. 

With Clint distracted by his arrows, Bruce suddenly realized he could feel eyes on the back of his neck.  The physicist glanced over his shoulder.  Natasha was watching them silently from the doorway.  She looked slightly disheveled and she had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder.  She must have just arrived back in New York.  Evidently, she’d already heard what had happened and had come by to check on Clint.  When she saw she had been spotted, she gave Bruce the ghost of a smile and vanished into the tower. Bruce smiled a little after her.  He wondered how long she had been standing there.

The sniper returned with a full quiver, apparently oblivious to Natasha’s brief visit.  He dropped it to the floor and set his bow across his shoulders.  Clint draped a forearm over either end and rotated from side to side a few times to stretch his back. “I dunno how you stand it, man,” he said glumly, while he stretched.

Bruce could think of several things that the archer could be referencing. “You’ll have to be a little more specific,” he said with a sheepish smile, trying to lighten the mood a little.  “Stand what, exactly?”

“The way their eyes follow you,” Clint said, avoiding Bruce’s gaze. He let the bow fall from his shoulders. “All the time.  I can feel them watching me.  Like they’re afraid I’m going to turn on them again.”

Bruce sighed.   Clint sounded unnerved by the sudden attention. The physicist himself had grown accustomed to the wary looks that followed him throughout SHIELD on the rare occasion he went to headquarters, or worse, the helicarrier.  Natasha still wouldn’t get into an elevator with him, although she’d grown somewhat warmer towards him of late.  Bruce theorized that was thanks to Clint’s influence.

“You sort of get used to it after a while…” he told the agent, wishing he could think of something that sounded more encouraging.

“Yeah, well, right now it makes me feel like shit,” Clint snapped, jamming his bow into its’ folded position with uncharacteristic violence.   

Clint must have caught a finger in the process, because he swore viciously and for a moment, looked like he was going to throw the offending object.  Bruce cringed.  But the agent was either too disciplined or too fond of his bow to throw it, so he settled for giving his quiver a hefty kick.  Several black arrows clattered hollowly across the floor.

Bruce crouched to gather the fallen arrows.  Clint dropped his bow and ran his hands through his hair several times, obviously trying to get a grip on his temper.  He took the proffered arrows with a grateful look. “How come you’re not upstairs geekin’ out with Stark?” he asked Bruce.

 _Because I’m needed elsewhere_ , Bruce thought, but of course he would never say something like that aloud.  He was going to give Tony a piece of his mind as soon as the billionaire resurfaced, though.  It was one thing to mess with Bruce, but it was another thing entirely to mess with his lab.    “Tony took off a couple hours ago,” he explained while he got to his feet. “The lab’s…not exactly habitable right now.”

“Really,” Clint stated.  The corner of his mouth quirked upward slightly. “What did he do this time?”

“Remember that program I was writing a while back?” Bruce asked.  The agent nodded.  “I asked Tony to debug it.  It processes the data now…but it also plays _Sexy and I Know It_ with a slideshow of Iron Man photos on all the computers until it finishes running.”

Clint now looked dangerously close to smiling. “Can’t you just turn it off?” he asked.

“Just turn it off…have you _met_ Tony Stark?” Bruce exclaimed.  He pinched the bridge of his nose wearily.  “I’ve been going through the code on my phone because he hijacked all my computers and I can’t figure out what he did.  I guess I just have to wait it out.”

 “Y’know, for a guy who claims to be your friend, Stark spends a lot of time trying to piss you off,” the sniper observed.

It was a well-established fact that Bruce tolerated Tony’s antics far better than anyone else on the team.  The physicist had more reason to be grateful to Tony Stark than most.  He’d given Bruce a lab, a home, and a job.  But more importantly, Tony had extended the hand of friendship without hesitation when everyone else was too nervous to even approach him.  Banner’s irritation faded somewhat.  He could put up with a few silly pranks in exchange for all that.

“Tony likes to tickle the dragon’s tail,” Bruce said, a little fondly.

Clint’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline.  “That some sort of geek euphemism I _don’t_ want to know about?”

 “Not exactly,” the physicist explained with a chuckle. “It’s what they nicknamed criticality experiments during the Manhattan Project.  The idea was to determine the point at which a core would go critical.  They were incredibly dangerous experiments; one slip and you got blasted with a massive dose of radiation.”  He grinned lopsidedly at Clint.  “Some days I feel like it’s a pretty good metaphor for Tony’s, uh, behavior.”

Clint raised an eyebrow.  “So…Stark is trying to find out how much he has to bug you before you go critical and Hulk-out?”

“I think Tony is decent enough not to go that far,” Bruce shrugged.  “But that doesn’t mean he won’t try.”

Clint scoffed.  “I think he’d think it was hilarious.  Until the big guy smashed his Rolls.”

The archer took a precarious seat on the low barrier designed to keep shooters from straying into the line of fire.  The physicist opted for a place on the concrete floor.  Someday, Bruce thought, he was going to question Clint about his categorical dislike of chairs. 

“How much control do you have when you’re transformed?” Clint asked suddenly, looking pensive now that his anger had faded.

The question caught Bruce off-guard.  He glanced around to be certain they were alone.  Clint noticed him looking and chuckled ruefully.

“There’s nobody here.  C’mon, Banner, who’d wanna be stuck down here with the rage monster and the zombie?”

The attempt at humor didn’t veil the pain in the agent’s voice. It hurt Bruce too, but he managed to hide his wince.  “I can’t control the Other Guy at all,” he replied.  “Once I’ve changed, it’s his show.  I can sort of influence him if I do it right, though.   When, how I’m feeling when I change, stuff like that.  If I’m calm and controlled, he’s…easier to deal with.”

“What about not calm and controlled?”

Bruce grimaced.  Right, Clint hadn’t seen him on the helicarrier.  Neither of them had exactly been at their best at the time.  “Things, uh, get smashed.”

“I see,” Clint said.  He was compulsively running his long fingers over the fletching of an arrow, over and over.  Bruce didn’t think he was aware of doing it.  Between the fidgeting and his earlier outburst, he could tell Clint was still worked up over something. 

They sat in silence for a few moments before Bruce asked: “So are you going to tell me what really happened today at SHIELD?”

The agent gave him a rueful half-smile.  “You don’t miss much, do you, Banner?”

“I’ve been on the run for almost two years.  You get observant or you get caught.”

“Damn shrinks denied my request to see the security footage from the…attack on the helicarrier,” Clint said with forced casualness.  He stopped worrying the arrow long enough to pass a hand over his face. “I got mad. Why don’t they get it?  I just need to know, Bruce.  I need to see what I did.”

Bruce could understand that better than most.  “Did they give you a reason?”

“They think I’m obsessing,” Clint admitted, looking at a spot on the floor.

“Over…?” Bruce already had a pretty good idea of what Clint was obsessing about (thanks to Natasha), but he wanted to hear it from the archer directly.

“The other video.”

“The one from New Mexico?” Bruce clarified.  He’d come into the lab one morning to find the chilling security video of Loki’s attack on the Joint Dark Energy Mission laboratory queued up on his main workstation.  Naturally, he’d watched it.

Clint looked up with a scowl.  He didn’t seem particularly surprised that Bruce knew about it.  “I’m going to kill Stark.  I don’t care if he wants to screw with SHIELD, but he needs to stay the hell out of personnel files.”

“I don’t think killing Tony would help your case with psych,” Bruce said dryly.  “It was Natasha, actually.  At least, I think it was her.  I found the file open on my desktop right before she left town.”

“Sounds like something she would do,” Clint grumbled, and Bruce couldn’t tell if he was grateful or annoyed with the Russian assassin.  His voice grew bitter.  “Yeah, that one.  The one where you can see Loki hotwire my brain like I’d hotwire a car.”

“You’ve watched it over a hundred times,” Bruce observed, glancing up at the agent.  “They might have a point, you know.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed dangerously.  “Don’t start on me, Banner, I’ve seen that stack of clippings you keep-”

 “You don’t remember it, do you?” Bruce interrupted, refusing to be baited by Clint’s jab.

The agent abruptly deflated.  He looked away. “I remember being…rearranged.  Cold fingers picking through my thoughts,” Clint said.  The arrow trembled a little in his hands. “Nothing after that.  You’d think putting a couple rounds into my boss would have left some kind of impression,” he added with humorless laugh.

“Clint, it’s not going to come back,” Bruce said quietly.  He spoke from experience.  “No matter how many times you watch it.”

“I’m not trying to get it back…I’m just trying to put it together,” Clint exclaimed.  “He took over my _mind_ , Bruce, and I didn’t even fight back!”

“I talked with Selvig a little after Manhattan,” Bruce told him.  “He mentioned the failsafe he built into the device.  He resisted, unconsciously at least.  I think you did too.” 

“Yeah, because killing six agents on the helicarrier’s bridge was clearly resisting.  I didn’t resist it.  Hell, I _enjoyed_ it.”

“ _Don’t_ , Clint,” Bruce said, threading steel into his voice.  “Don’t go there.  You know it doesn’t help.”

The agent took a deep breath.  “Sorry.  I’m just…” Clint’s voice trailed off into nothing.  He shrugged.

“Hey, I get it,” Bruce said with a slight smile.  “Just…hear me out, okay?  You fired two rounds to the middle of Fury’s chest.  Why?”

Clint gave him a funny look.  “Because I wanted to kill him.”

“Why not shoot him in the head?  I’ve seen you shoot, Clint.  You don’t miss.  He was what, fifteen, twenty feet away?  That’s practically point blank for you.”

“So I shot him in the chest instead of in the head. What does it matter?  I mean- _Jesus_ , Bruce, I shot Director Fury!”

“It _matters!_ ” Bruce snapped at him, counting on the rare display of temper to get Clint’s attention.  It worked; the agent looked up in surprise.  Bruce softened his tone a little.  “It’s incredibly important, Clint, can’t you see?  It means there was a part of you that said: ‘I do not want this.  I do not condone this.’  You _resisted._ Whatever else you did, whatever else Loki _made_ you do, some part of you was trying to fight back. You knew Fury was wearing Kevlar.”

 “Everyone knows that.  Fury’s paranoid,” Clint said sullenly.

“You shot him where he’d be protected!” Bruce exclaimed.  “Look, when I’m transformed I have no conscious control over the Other Guy.  But I do influence him.  He recognizes things that are important to me.  He saved Betty’s life once.  You were there when he saved Tony.  I might not be able to stop him doing bad things, but maybe I sort of keep it from being as bad as it could be.”

 “You telling me to stop blaming myself?” It was almost a challenge.  There was thought in Clint’s voice now, and that was all Bruce wanted to hear.

“No,” Bruce said bluntly, “But think about it.  If you’d really, truly wanted Director Fury dead, he’d be dead.  You had the skill and the means and the opportunity.  Same with Natasha.  Loki made you do some terrible things, but he couldn’t make you kill them.  Fundamentally you’re a good person, Clint.  I don’t think Loki factored that into his equation. ”

“Maybe,” Clint conceded with a frown.  He looked down at the arrow in his hands. “Maybe not.”

Well, it was a start, Bruce decided.  He got to his feet to leave.  He had the impression Natasha wouldn’t reappear until he had left, and he didn’t want to keep her waiting too long.  Clint probably needed to talk with her as much as he’d needed to talk with Bruce.

 “Are they ever going to stop looking at me like…that?” the agent asked before he could leave.  The plaintive note was back in his voice.   “Back at HQ, I mean.”

Bruce smiled slightly, thinking of the wary looks he’d received during first few weeks they had inhabited Stark Tower.  “You guys did.”


	5. Chapter 5

This time they were smart enough to wait until Tony was in Malibu.  Steve was doing his weekly thing at the USO.   Natasha was at headquarters.  Clint was on the range, some seventy floors below.  It was easy for the two SHIELD agents to corner Bruce Banner in his lab, trapping him against his desk at the focus of the parabolic room.

His chimes hadn’t given him enough warning; the agents were inside and between Bruce and the door before he could do anything to prevent it.  He was dismayed to see it was two agents he had not yet encountered. The elder introduced himself as Agent Harris; the younger (he was a kid, probably younger than Steve) remained nameless.  Banner had ignored his most recent summons to headquarters, so they had come to his lab pester him about containment protocols for the Hulk. Harris had been at him for over an hour now and Bruce was quickly losing what remained of his patience.  Thus far he had maintained a grip on his temper by imagining the agent as particularly nasty questioner at a conference.

“With respect, Dr. Banner,” Harris drawled, his tone making it clear he meant the exact opposite, “We can’t help contain the Hulk problem without fully understanding it.”  He pretended to study his fingernails with feigned nonchalance, but his eyes never left Bruce.  “Let us do some testing; we can work something out together to keep the Hulk under control. Nobody wants a repeat of Harlem.”

Bruce’s temper flared and he felt the Other Guy stir on the edge of his consciousness.  He wanted to smash the stupid agent.  Bruce ignored him and forced himself to take a deep breath.  “SHIELD’s idea of containment was to throw me in a cage and drop me from 30,000 feet,” he retorted, unable to keep a hint of bitterness out of his voice.  “Forgive me if I don’t trust SHIELD.”

The agent gave him an oily smile that set his teeth on edge.  The man was up to something and Bruce did not like it.  “You know, Dr. Banner, there’s no reason for you to be physically present for the testing.”

The scientist felt his laced fingers unravel and clench into fists without conscious volition.  So that was what this whole charade had been about: SHIELD was after blood samples again.  The Other Guy stirred more insistently.  For once, they were in agreement.  “No.”

“Dr. Banner-”

“How many times do I have to tell you people?” Bruce snapped.  His face felt hot.  He could feel the Other Guy pacing restlessly just behind his eyes. “The answer is no.”

“Dr. Banner, please be reasonable-“

The man took a step forward.  He had something in his hand.  With a thrill of fear, Bruce recognized the metallic glimmer of the needle of a syringe.  He swallowed hard.  “I said _no_!”   

The scientist instinctively stepped backwards.  His legs slammed into the edge of his desk.  He was trapped.  His eyes darted between the needle and the agent.   _No.  No._    He could feel his heart starting to race.  The voice in his head was deeper now, almost a roar.  _NO._  His eyes narrowed.  Bruce was going to grab the agent’s leg and slam him into the wall until blood ran down his face-

The crash of chimes as the lab door swung violently open brought Bruce back to himself.  Both agents’ heads snapped around to look at the door.  Horrified by how close he’d come to going green, Bruce used the momentary distraction to force the Other Guy back deep into the recesses of his psyche.

Clint Barton strode through the doorway.  The archer’s sharp eyes flicked from Bruce to Agent Harris to the syringe in Harris’ hand.  Cold rage contorted his face before it seemed to harden, and Clint vanished.  

“The hell are you doing, Harris?” Agent Barton snapped at the other SHIELD agent, his arms folded across his chest.  He fixed Harris with a stare so frigid it sent chills down Bruce’s spine.

“Agent Barton,” Harris drawled.  His voice dripped condescension.  “Nice to see you’ve remembered who you’re working for.”

An expression of pure malevolence flashed across Barton’s face.  He lowered his hands slowly with an unmistakable air of menace.  His icy eyes flicked to Bruce before settling on Harris again. 

“They were just leaving,” Bruce managed before Harris could say anything. 

Harris’ eyes narrowed, but he backed off in the face of this united front.  He gestured to the younger agent and swept from the lab, but not without a final parting shot.  “We’ll be in touch, Dr. Banner.  We… know where to find you.” 

Bruce waited until the door was safely shut behind them before he sagged onto the edge of his desk. “Why can’t they just leave me alone?” he cried with frustration.  He reached up to remove his glasses with shaking fingers and squeezed the bridge of his nose wearily.  

“That as close as I think it was?”

“Yeah,” Bruce admitted.  It _had_ been appallingly close.  He sighed.  Something as stupid as Agent Harris’ taunts shouldn’t have been able to get to him so easily.

“Jesus.”  Barton’s voice was tight with smothered anger.  “What’d they want?”

“They said testing on the Other Guy,” the physicist replied without looking up.  “They were really after blood samples.  _Again_.”

The invasion of his lab, which he considered as personal as his apartment and equally inviolate, had shaken Bruce more deeply than he cared to admit.  It was one of the very few places he felt safe and they had just…invaded it.  He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.  This was exactly the sort of thing he had been worried about when he had accepted Tony’s invitation to live in Stark Tower. 

“Hey, don’t let that prick get to you, man.”

Bruce glanced up.  The steely Agent Barton was gone.  It was Clint now, just Clint, studying him from his usual perch on the bench and kicking his boots back and forth a little bit. 

“He was after my blood,” the physicist said bitterly.  Just the thought of the needle sent his heart racing again.  He squeezed his temples with trembling fingers.  “They’re after my blood and they know where to find me.  _They know where to find me_ , Clint.  That always gets to me.”

He glanced towards the door.   Maybe…maybe it was time to leave.  If he moved quickly he could be out of town within the hour.  It wouldn’t take him long to pack the essentials.  Bruce had a forged passport and several hundred dollars in cash stashed in a locked drawer in his desk.  That would be more than enough to get him across the Mexican border and set him up for several months, maybe even farther south if he did it right-   

“Bruce,” Clint said.  “You…you don’t have to run.”

The sound of his name interrupted his panicked thoughts.  The physicist looked up.  “What?”

The agent had dropped down from the bench onto his feet.  His hands were raised slightly; palms open and spread to either side in a non-threatening gesture.  Bruce tensed a little, but Clint was not blocking his path to the door.

“You’re thinking about running again,” the agent said evenly.  There was a soothing quality about his voice that couldn’t quite hide a note of concern.  “I’m saying: don’t.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed warily.  “How do you know?”

“You had the same look on your face last weekend when Stark wanted to do karaoke,” Clint quipped, but his eyes were serious. Bruce chuckled hollowly at the thought of the engineer.  Tony was going to go up like Bikini Atoll when he found out SHIELD managed to slip tower security again.  “Look, they aren’t coming back.  You don’t have to run.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Bruce exclaimed, exasperated by his nonsensical repetition. 

Clint raised an eyebrow.  “Because you’re packing, Bruce.”

 The scientist blinked.  Somehow he had ended up behind his desk.  His fake passport was in his hand.  Two rolls of currency, one in euros, one in dollars, sat on the desk in front of him.  A backpack he’d nearly forgotten he’d owned was sitting open on his chair.  A battered laptop computer peeked out from within.  The fact that Bruce didn’t even remember coming around his desk, let alone beginning to pack, disturbed him greatly. “Oh…”

“Hill should have caught this.  I’ll talk to her.  It won’t happen again,” Clint told him, and Bruce knew he meant it.  The archer was eyeing him with genuine concern.  “You okay?”

“Apparently not as okay as I thought,” Bruce mumbled sheepishly.  He relocated the backpack to the floor and dropped into his chair with a sigh.  He leaned his elbows on the desk and hid his face in his hands.  His cheeks felt warm with embarrassment.  He could feel the archer’s eyes boring into him.

Clint paused.  “Why did you stick around, Banner?” he asked.  There was a sort of weary curiosity about his words that made Bruce wonder if Harris’ taunt was symptomatic of larger issues back at headquarters.  “SHIELD’s treating you like shit.   The city stresses you out.   Every time you leave the tower you’re watching for Ross’ minions over your shoulder.  Why’d you decide to stay?”

Bruce raised his head from his hands.  “Well, it wasn’t just because of Tony or this place,” he said, gesturing around the lab. “Honestly?  I thought I could do more good here with you guys than anywhere else.”

 Clint shot him a knowing look.  “That’s not how it works,” the archer said in a low voice.  “You can’t ever make some things right, Bruce.”

“Maybe not,” Bruce replied.  “But I can at least try to make my life a net positive.”

The scientist ran a hand through his hair.  The archer was looking at him questioningly now, waiting for an explanation.  He looked encouragingly intrigued.

“Things got easier with the Other Guy when I focused on helping others instead of trying to help myself.  He sort of…let me do it,” Bruce explained.  He hesitated.  He hadn’t articulated his plans to anyone yet, not even Tony, even though Tony was directly involved in the process.  It all seemed rather stupid now.  He took a deep breath and continued. “Now I want to try to bring him in more directly.  Make him a force for good.  He’s a blunt instrument, sure, but if pointed in the right direction, and with a couple of safeguards…”   

To his credit, Clint didn’t laugh.  He didn’t even smile at the absurdity of Bruce’s idea.  He just looked at him and said: “Safeguards?”

 “I hate to admit it, but SHIELD has a point. What happens if I go green by accident?” Bruce said seriously. “None of you can stop the Other Guy.  Not with Thor gone.  You won’t even get close.”

“You seem like you’ve got a pretty good handle on it,” the agent observed.

Bruce gave him a weary smile.  “Do I?”

“C’mon, Banner, you know we’d figure something out if it came down to it-”

“But how many people would die before you guys could figure something out?”  Bruce interrupted.  He found the archer’s confidence heartening, but they had to be realistic. “It’s all I worry about, Clint.”

Bruce got up from his desk and headed over to the holographic worktable. The archer followed him on noiseless feet.  The physicist tapped at the controls and brought up a file.  Complex images sprang to life: a ball and stick model of a very complicated organic molecule, tables of numbers, and a set of detailed schematics.

“What is it?” Clint asked, poking curiously at the hologram of the molecule.  It spun around his finger.

“A containment system,” Bruce said with a half-smile.  “I’m hoping if we can demonstrate to Director Fury that I’ve, _we’ve_ got this under control, he’ll call off SHIELD. Let us handle it.”

The agent made an incredulous noise, but he looked interested nonetheless. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Think adamantium-tipped tranquilizer darts with enough sedatives to bring down a very large, very angry green elephant.”

Clint’s eyebrows rose.  “Good thing you’re buddies with a billionaire, man.”

“The hard part’s actually been getting the sedative cocktail right,” Bruce shrugged. “The Other Guy is pretty resistant to most of them, like Steve.  So am I, to some extent.  And testing is, uh, complicated.”

The sniper flicked through the holograms, studying the schematics with interest.  He stopped on one image in particular.  He increased the size of the hologram and decreased it.  He allowed it to rotate slowly in midair while he studied it for several silent moments.  Finally, he glanced at Bruce through the blue-green wireframe image.

“Banner,” Clint said, “This looks a hell of a lot like an arrow.”

“Tony based the design on yours’,” Bruce admitted, a little nervously. 

A mixture of emotions warred across Clint’s face before he could retreat behind one of his neutral agent expressions.  He couldn’t hide the wariness in his eyes, however.  “What, Stark didn’t have space for another gun in his suit?”

 “I trust Tony with a lot of things,” Bruce replied quietly.  “But I don’t trust him to make an objective judgment about the Other Guy.  He likes the Hulk too much for that.”

“Bruce…”

“I can’t trust just anyone with this.  It’s not just power over him, but over _me_.  There are people out there, not just at SHIELD, who think I should be in a cage or in a lab or even dead.  Do you have any idea how much that scares me?”

Bruce jumped when the archer suddenly slammed his hands onto the edge of the table.  “Christ, _anyone’s_ more trustworthy than me!”  Clint shouted, and Bruce knew he was thinking about how easily Loki had overthrown his mind.   The sniper looked away with a sigh, embarrassed by the sudden outburst of temper.  “I’m just a guy with a bow, Bruce,” he added in a quiet, almost pained voice. He ran a hand uncomfortably through his hair.  “A pretty fucked up guy at that.”

 “So why did you decide to stay with the team?” the scientist asked. “You could have taken a leave; nobody would have blamed you after Loki.  You could have been reassigned.  But you stayed.”

If he was offended by the question, Clint didn’t show it.  He looked down at his hands.  “I ask myself that a lot,” the archer admitted after a moment of hesitation.  He glanced at Bruce and chuckled humorlessly.  “Guess everything else seemed kinda small potatoes after saving the world.”

“I know the feeling.  My whole, uh, career seemed pretty trivial after seeing what the Tesseract could do,” Bruce said with a laugh.  He sobered again.  “You understand, Clint.  None of the others know what it’s like to have your mind taken away from you, to wake up and see the terrible things you’ve done, to have to take responsibility for those things later on.  I trust that more than a suit or a serum.” 

“I don’t know, man…”

“Hey, I’m just a guy with anger management issues,” Bruce quipped.  Clint let out a genuine snort of laughter at that and the physicist smiled.  “I think I can do a lot of good here, I really do.  But there’s potential to do a lot of harm as well.  If I’m going to try, if I’m going to stay with the Avengers, I need to know there’s someone who can bring down the Other Guy if he gets out of hand.  And it has to be someone I can trust not to abuse that power over me.”

“Aw, _hell_ ,” Clint muttered, and Bruce was suddenly afraid that he had misjudged everything terribly and that the archer was going to walk out.  But Barton didn’t move.  He appeared lost in thought for several moments.   Finally, he spoke.  “You got an idea of the volume you’ll need yet?”

“If my math is right, yeah,” Bruce replied, privately relieved.  He tapped on the worktable controls again and highlighted the relevant numbers.

Clint studied them with a frown.  “It’s not a bad design.  Little bulkier than I’m used to...heavier, so the balance will be different,” he observed.  The agent was all business now.  “I need prototypes of the canisters as soon as Stark can build them, plus the final weights.”

“Tony’s already built a couple,” Bruce told him.  “I made him finish them before he left.  They’re down in the workshop.”

 “You know, SHIELD can still pull the plug on the whole thing.  I’ve still gotta clear psych,” the agent mused.  He eyed Bruce.  “You’re pretty confident I’m gonna pass that final eval, huh?”

The physicist shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

The corner of Clint’s mouth had quirked into one of his not-quite smiles.   “Glad one of us is.  I’ll handle the assembly myself.  I want to get as much practice as I can in with the new weight before we try and test anything.”

Bruce grinned.  “Wouldn’t want you to miss.”

“Banner,” Clint said.  The hint of a spark was back in his pale eyes.  “I never miss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! :)


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